Market mechanisms in the local-government sector have transformed service delivery and the management of manual municipal labour. Low pay has traditionally been tolerated in these services in exchange for job security; and the relative autonomy entailed by non-profit production methods had permitted the continuation of a public-service ethos. But in a labour-intensive sector, the move from democratically determined to market-led production within ever-decreasing levels of central funding is only possible through job loss, work intensification and insecurity. Case study findings show how these pressures were played out in school cleaning and grounds maintenance in a Labour local authority.
The Whitley Reports, 1917, were seen by contemporaries as conservative: they reflected pre-existing voluntaristic approaches to the labour problem rather than a radical departure. Largely neglected by the well-established private sector, for whom they were intended, Whitley Councils were taken up by the newly emerging public service unions. The inter-war years demonstrated Whitleyism’s lack of clout. But, endorsed by governments during and after the Second World War, public sector Whitleyism came to embody the tenets of progressive public administration by providing nationally determined pay, career progression and a public service ethos. These hard-won union gains are under attack from neo-liberal reforms that attempt to model public service labour relations on the private sector. The paper examines the major weaknesses and strengths of the Whitley model for managing public service industrial relations through an analysis of a century of Whitleyism
This special issue uses the occasion of the centenary of the Whitley Commission Reports to illuminate the contemporary crisis in public service industrial relations from a historical perspective. In all six countries studied—Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the USA—public service employment is labour intensive and quantitatively significant in the overall economy. Public services have also been major targets of neoliberal reforms, starting in the UK and the USA at the turn of the 1980s and in the other countries about a decade later. In addition, the relatively high union density and the political dimension of public services and public union strategies have been major targets of new public management and more latterly austerity. However, the regressive period has had a differential impact in different countries. In the liberal market economies of the UK and the USA, the neoliberal turn has destabilised traditional patterns of public sector industrial relations to greatest effect. While in the more coordinated market economies, traditional arrangements and values have been more resistant to austerity and neoliberal reforms. We attempt to shed light on these differential impacts through a critical analysis of the historical evolution of public sector industrial relations in each country
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